Hello from the Northern Hemisphere

Day 7: Still in Svalbard Archipelago

Lifted the blockout blind this morning to find this……

A stark contrast to the brown mountains and white dots of yesterday!

Here’s our journey today…..

We took a zodiac cruise near the Samarinbreen glacier, named after Samarin who was a craftsman, fisherman and member of Arctic expeditions between 1899 and 1902. Very smooth waters and majestic scenery.

It was also very peaceful apart from the noise from the glacier calving. Yes, it’s not just cows who calve. Calving is when chunks of ice break off at the end of a glacier, and become icebergs. Icebergs come in various colors. An iceberg’s color can tell us a lot about what it’s made of or where it came from.
For example:

• Brown icebergs carry moraine debris from the glacier
• White icebergs have lots of bubbles inside
• Blue icebergs are very dense
• Greenish-black icebergs may have calved off the bottom of a glacier

After lunch we had another zodiac outing…this time we got to spend some time on land. The wrecked shed in the picture was a Russian research station in the late 1800s before becoming the base for Norwegian trappers until around 1941.

There were also some lovely colourful flowers

and here’s today’s coffee emblem